Conventionally, many of the computer system services offered by a service provider, or utilized by various computers within the computer system, are not defined in terms of a cost per user/computer transaction. Instead, each individual service provided by a service provider, such as an information technology (IT) department, is conventionally associated as part of a lump sum required in providing all IT services, often with no correlation to the actual cost incurred to provide the individual service. For example, an IT department typically requires funding in terms of equipment, such as computer hardware, software, personnel to maintain the equipment and/or the software and facilities to accommodate the equipment and the personnel.
In general, a computer transaction such as searching a remote database would require different IT services to execute the transaction (in terms of computer hardware, software, personnel and facilities) than a computer transaction sending e-mail. The cost of the transaction, in terms of the costs incurred by the IT department to provide the services, would also be different. Under a conventional approach, however, the individual cost of the IT service as a function of the actual cost to provide that individual cost is not readily available. Instead, the costs associated with providing the various services are not considered individually, but are rather conventionally grouped as part of the general IT budget. Accordingly, under this traditional approach, a user transaction cost is typically approximated in a very general way as a percentage of the overall IT budget.
As mentioned above, two computer transactions often require different IT services to be executed. Under the conventional cost approximation of the total IT budget, however, a transaction cost would include the cost of providing and maintaining IT services not utilized to execute the transaction. This conventional transaction cost approximation is not a function of the actual IT cost incurred to execute the transaction. Accordingly, many IT budgets are viewed as an overhead cost which cannot be accurately reflected and correlated to actual use. Thus, there is a need for attributing IT costs associated with use of various IT resources to the users that are utilizing the services to calculate a user transaction cost.
Many software applications are conventionally sold on computer-readable mediums, such as a CD-ROM or via the Internet, along with a user product license in which the user or users load the software on their system. Accordingly, as the software is updated, the user often has to purchase the update and load it on the system. As would be generally understood, this type of transaction is product based, with the user paying for receipt of the software product.
With the increase in global network transactions, however, traditional software applications are transforming into a service that is provided by the network provider. For example, a user pays a fee to have access to the global network, which in turn also gives the user access to a plurality of software applications. In this scenario, the user is not required to load any software on their system and software updates are automatically applied the next time the user accesses the application. Thus, this type of transaction becomes service based, with the user paying for access to the service.
Under a conventional transaction cost analysis, the user fee would not accurately reflect the actual cost associated with providing the user access to the system and software applications, but would more generally reflect an assigned value by the service provider. Under this approach, the user would likely be limited to a flat fee billing arrangement, and would not be given the ability to determine his or her actual cost of use. Moreover, the service provider would have a limited amount of information in determining the cost (in terms of equipment, software, facilities, and personnel) for different types of computer user use. Accordingly, there is also a need to more accurately associate user transaction costs for service-based software delivery.